Averil Power (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and join with him in welcoming the ESOF that will take place in Dublin this July. As he pointed out, it gives us an opportunity to showcase the best of Irish science and all the exciting developments in it to the international science community. With 5,000 delegates in the Convention Centre, Dublin, it is also a great opportunity to showcase it as a top-class facility which could attract other high-value conferences and tourism to Dublin city. I hope those who attend the ESOF will become ambassadors for the centre and for Dublin afterwards.

The ESOF, along with the Dublin City of Science 2012, has a programme to engage the public. We have seen from examples such as the Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin that there are interesting ways of making science accessible and making it easier for people to learn about all the exciting developments in the science community. Accordingly, I welcome the fact there will be so many public events as part of the programme.

I note part of the programme includes a section on entrepreneurship and on forming a company as part of a science-2-business programme. There has been much success in Ireland with multinational and foreign direct investment. However, we need to do more for Irish people with scientific ideas to enable them to become enterprises and convert their ideas into businesses and small companies. This section will be of great value to the Irish scientists taking part in the ESOF.

There has been significant investment in science technology and innovation over the past several years. Considering our current economic strengths and niches it is an area with great potential for employment and growth. It is central to both maintaining existing foreign direct investment and attracting more in the future. While the Tánaiste quipped during the general election that we cannot all work in a laboratory, thankfully many do and I hope many more will. As the Minister of State stated, we are excelling in niche areas such as immunology and pharmaceuticals and can still be world leaders in them. The previous Government prioritised the areas of science and research with investment the whole way up from schools to research laboratories. The PRTLI, programme for research in third-level institutions, was also established and through its five cycles approximately €900 million has been made available for research. We have seen successes from that with Ireland in the top 20 countries in the overall scientific global rankings and that nine of the top ten global pharmaceutical companies are based here. This shows this investment has paid off. In the current circumstances with resources so tight, it is important we are investing in the right areas and there is a direct pay-off with jobs. The Minister of State will have support from his side of the House when making arguments for budget funding in this area.

From previous engagements, I know the Minister of State is amenable to listening to some of the Opposition's proposals. We need to improve integrating science with students' other interests, particularly at second level. For example, sports science could be made part of the second level curriculum. With the current interest in this summer's Olympic Games, such a programme could get kids thinking about sports science and deal with the practicality of a training programme for, say, the boxer, Katie Taylor, rather than heavy theory from textbooks. University first-year science and technology programmes should be more generic. The concern has been raised at conferences organised by the Higher Education Authority, HEA, that some university courses are too specific in their first year. We should consider making science a general degree while medicine, pharmacy and psychology become graduate programmes as they are elsewhere. This would address the issues we have with high points for entry into medicine. The Minister will be aware of the criticisms made about the health professions admission test, HPAT- Ireland, which was an attempt to put in place a better entry system but it seems to have added extra burdens to students. There is also the issue of an inequality being introduced through the test because private courses to pass the test can be purchased. We need to examine greater interaction at third level between the humanities and the sciences. Some colleges have been good at opening up the idea of a broad curriculum. They get students in different areas to do modules in languages or a little science or, if one is in science, a little business. From giving science students an element of entrepreneurship and giving humanities students a basic understanding of science, it would be good to have more cross-disciplinary options as well. If one thinks of it, Leonardo da Vinci was not only a scientific genius, he was also a great artist. There is much complementarity, and yet, increasingly, and with more specialised courses, we are separating the humanities and the sciences, and that is something that should be looked at.

On a criticism which I offer constructively, I am genuinely concerned about how the Government can expect more students to study science at graduate level when all the postgraduate grants have been abolished. It is creating problems right across the system. Many postgraduate students are only becoming aware of it. Many who will be looking to apply for postgraduate courses, now that they have finished their undergraduate examinations and are looking at what options will be able open to them in the autumn, are realising that they cannot afford it. From a jobs point of view, as well as equity of access, that will cause considerable problems for us. That should be looked at. Perhaps the Minister of State, in his own brief, could consider increasing the level of funding for postgraduate grants to the new Irish Research Council, maybe even in only specific scientific areas.